-NUT, NLC Look Other Way
THE Nigeria Police has again swam into a threatening strong current of public outcry over allegations of running elementary and secondary schools where teachers and non-academic staff are treated as slave-laborers.
Sharpedgenews.com reporters made a startling discovery on how authorities of the Nigeria Police breached the constitution by running schools which should have been under the purview of states and local governments, hire teachers who are paid outside the teachers’ salary scale and then demand promotions for upwards of 10, 14 years.
According to police insiders who spoke to our investigators under condition of anonymity, in order to muffle the voices and vanguards of oppressed teachers in the police schools scattered all over Nigeria, these recruits are also forbidden from unionizing. The leadership of the Nigeria Union of Teachers and the Nigeria Labor Congress have allegedly been compromised to turn the other way while industrial rights of the workers are under serious breach.
One of the sources who blew the whistle on the Police administration said the half-hearted, usually political declarations of the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, has not stopped the culture of secrecy and brazen stealing which has resulted in repeated diversion of huge capital meant to ensure satisfactory remuneration of the weary teachers.
“Some of us were fired as levels 04 and 06 teachers with salaries as low as N10,000 and N16,000. We have been static, without promotions for more than ten, sixteen years,” revealed a teacher in Lagos, last week.
It was also alleged that the highest level of command in the Force Headquarters, with the purported concordance of the inspector-general, have bought into the plot to resist the attempt at bringing the teachers under the police affairs ministry.
In outright violation of industrial standards in Nigeria and in a fashion antithetical to the international labor conventions to which Nigeria is a signatory, the teachers who are questionably employed by Nigeria Police are alleged retained and treated inferior to their uniformed counterparts.
“They are not treated as part of the force; they are just existing in penury,” volunteered a source at the accounts department of the Nigeria Police in Akure.
A worse practice was said to have subsisted until recently. It was alleged that some of the teachers had to provide as much as an amount ranging from N50,000 to N100,000 in order to influence promotions. Although ‘settlement syndrome’ has now been exposed, under-the-deck rules to curry favors still allegedly exist.
Sharpedgenews.com learned that many of the affected teachers do not earn enough to enable affordable medical care or send children to school.
The police in Nigeria continue to create schools and training facilities where children, trainers and teachers are brutalized and come to negatively impact the larger society.
The same police organization that deny promotion for teachers and other “bloody civilian” employees, now also employ newly graduated educators, usually relatives and spouses, make Level 08, their point of entry, thus making the fresh teachers, some of them taught by the oppressed much older counterparts. The new entrants are given accelerated promotion and better pay.